Terry Pratchett is a very funny writer-but to honest I like the audio book versions of his Discworld books better than the paper ones. While it is true that they both contain, more or less, the same exact words-the audio books have the considerable talents of Stephen Briggs-who does a really good job of bringing those words to life.
I am a great fan of accents-all kinds of accents-I can speak in a vast multitude of funny, odd, silly, and often totally incomprehensible voices. I have been told that I ought to have an audio edition of my blog and read each post as a slightly different person. That would be a bit of fun and good practice for my semi-goal of becoming a reader of audio books and moving to London to work for the BBC. But since many of my accents are of the British sort, there would be very little use for an America pretending to be British in Britain-though it does sound vaguely like the plot of a musical comedy.
Stephen Briggs has that job reading great books with a lot of funny, silly, and often incomprehensible accents. He does a brilliant job, as he has for many other Discworld novels over the years. There is a wonderful mixture of accents in Going Postal-English, Irish, Scottish, and at least a few others I couldn’t quite identify. The voice of the Golem Mr Pump is nice a rumbly-and Ms Dearheart sounds sort of sweet, in a very dangerous way. Stephen Briggs is brilliant and his many characterizations are perfect for Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal.
At any rate-Going Postal is the story of Moist von Lipwig and his struggles to run the Ankh-Morpork Post Office-another nice thing about audio books is that they pronounce all these damned silly words that Terry Pratchett is so fond of using in his stories of the great Discworld.
There is also a bit of continuity for those of us that pay attention-for example an Orangutan makes a cameo in Going Postal-this would be the Librarian of Unseen University who meet with an unfortunate accident some books ago. Death also stops by for a brief visit. I’m sure there are many other silly things going on that I am not familiar with as well.
As with all of the Discworld novels, everyone is a villain, a blackguard, and a general all around rounder. Just like our own world-except that they are purer forms of the phylum, not the mere shadowy types that we are familiar with.
Our story in Going Postal is about a con man who is rescued by a Tyrant-who doesn’t like to think of himself as a Tyrant, though clearly he has some deep dungeons where very unpleasant things go on. Moist is made the Post Master who is in charge of two slightly mad men, a Gollum, and a building filled with undelivered mail. Though countless convoluted means and slightly criminal activities, he brings the Post Office back to life. It is, of course, the countless convoluted and slightly criminal activities that make up the bulk of the book.
It is fun and funny and often thought provoking-as in do monsters really fancy eating pigeons that much? What would happen if Pi was rounded down to 3? Why had no one else thought of the Stamp before Moist showed up?
And after you’ve finished reading any of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books-when is the next Discworld book due out?
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